using HTML5 to build film credits

This is not a how-to post, but it is an idea that I hope someone else with the know-how runs with.

I posted a question on the FToM production blog the other day that was a question on the relevance of credits after a film, a conversation first started by Kelly Sutton, I think what I personally want to see most is not a doing away all-together with post-roll credits, but making them something useful.

When I’m curious about an actor or actresses name, or the cinematographer of a film, I never dig out the DVD, or more accurately these days - because I don’t watch many DVDs - I never dig up the film on Netflix streaming and skip through to the credits, I use Google, or IMDb.

Why? Well, not only do the credits after a film tell me a name and only a name - but the internet makes it easy to see other people’s work, photographs, film excerpts, biographies, etc. I can dig into a person’s involvement with a film as deep or as quickly as I feel like. And that is what I want to see happen with the credits after a film.

Again, I am not saying that I know how to do this, but as I understand HTML5, I do believe it is more than capable of being the searchable / interactive / linkable / sharable / expandable tool that feels missing from a film.

With HTML5, an entire film can be placed anywhere with a simple < video > tag, but what if the video itself had no credits at all contained in it? So that after the < video > ended, a scrolling credits built entirely with HTML5 began? If the transition between < video > and HTML5 credits was seamless, the person watching would never really know the split had taken place, but they would be able to search through for a name, a song, a crew position, etc.

Any ideas? How could we make this happen?